Read the first post on our adventure in France here and see the full gallery here.

The making of wet plate collodion images (tintypes) is intricately linked to traveling. Some of the early, iconic practitioners spend large parts of their careers traveling to exotic places - often to document new territories or distance wars. Roger Fenton famously documented the Crimean War in 1854 and a number of photographers traveled with the various expeditions west in the US to explore, among them Timothy O'Sullivan in 1867-68 (who - btw - had just spend years documenting the civil war).

The images they brought back were so good, both estheticly and technically, that it's hard to comprehend. Especially considering the obstacles they had to endure.

Driving a thousand kilometers through Europe from Normandy to Spain in a C3 Picasso (with aircondition) is in no way a comparable achievement. That's for sure. Still, I find it fun to muse over the similar challenges faced by people working in the same medium, with more or less the exactly same chemistry, more than 150 years ago.

One of the challenges I gave myself on this trip was to do some plates from the top of mountain passes. That obviously requited a setup light enough to carry. I usually bring a car full of gear, but this had to be scaled down.

The main thing was to build a smaller darkbox. With the help of my sister and a student of mine I made a box out of a smallish camera hardcase. That turned out to work just fine. Another thing was the camera. I usually work in 8x10, but this time I brought my 4x5 camera. That made it possible to carry camera, tripod, dark box, chemistry, a few liters of water and a special box for keeping the plates wet until I got back to the car. It actually worked.

Here's a few pictures of the setup in use of Tourmelet.

On my way up. Carrying dark box, bag with plate box full of water and a backpack with camera, lenses, chemistry and a tripod. It's more than 30 degrees celcius.

The box set up.

Inside the darkbox. From left to right is the silver tank (has water and silver nitrate in it), a bottle with collodion, developer, paper for wiping off the excess silver, a plate holder for 4x5 plates and - on the right - a tray for catching developer.

I’m in France with dear colleague John Tully, following the Tour de France. I'm doing tintypes and John is shooting digital and the plan is to collaborate on a series of images of all the stuff surrounding the tour it self, and stay clear of the actual riding.

But then you’re on a French mountain, waiting on the Peloton, and it’s hard not to try and capture a picture of all the craziness. Only thing is, I only brought my large format camera and a portable darkroom, so this could be a challenge.

This is roughly what’s involved and I do apologise for getting a little nerdy:

Before the riders get to you, around a billion motorcycles and cars passes by; police, press, vip’s and tour people. In one of these cars was a guy with a microphone screaming what sounded like names and times. What do I know; the only thing I can say in French is ‘baguette’. I somehow manage to have the friendly lady next to me explain that the breakaway group is 12 minutes ahead of the Peloton, coming up the mountain.

So when the breakaway riders fly past us, I set my timer to 12 minutes.

There’s two main challenges in this: first of all the metal plates I’m photographing on has to be in a silver bath for four minutes to become light sensitive. But also, they are not allowed to dry once they’re pulled out of the bath, and only the photo-Gods know, how long that will take. It depends on humanity and temperature.

All of this is not usually a big problem, but a slight challenge when there’s 150 riders coming cruising up a mountain. They most like will not stop and pose for a picture.

So when the clock gets down to five minutes, I pour the collodion, stick my head in the darkroom and put the plate in the silver. As I’m waiting for the four minutes to pass, helicopters start emerging behind the nearest ridge. When the clock goes off after four minutes, I get back in the dark, pull the plate out and put it in the plate holder.

Now I’m on the side of the road, waiting for the Peloton to arrive and hoping the plate won’t dry on me. All of a sudden the helicopters get closer and people start cheering and sure enough; the riders appear around the nearest corner.

I put the holder in the camera, pull the darkslide and start counting; ‘one case of beer, two cases of beer’ and ‘click’ - that’s it. A two second exposure of a whole lot of guys in very tight lycra flying by.

I’m just a few feet from the riders and the air pressure is so intense I have to hold on to my tripod. I don’ want to be the next guy who becomes Youtube-famous for crashing the Peloton.

As the remaining riders and cars are passing I get back in the darkroom and develop my plate.

Last year I visited Tønder Festival, a folk music festival in the southern part of Denmark, to do tintypes of musicians, guests and volunteers. This year the festival asked if they could exhibit the plates, and it's safe to say they did.

Thanks to Helle Arentbak for snapping the photos, as I unfortunatly couldn't be there this year.

I haven't written a full statement yet, but I'm exploring the effects of speed and of slowing down. These kids and young adults are moving at a blistering pace, often posting pictures of our shared image-making process on social media before I'm even done setting up my slow and complicated wet plate collodion rig. I'm curious to see the effect of asking them to sit still for extended periods at a time and their response to the laborious process involved in making a tintype image.